The Portland Trail Blazers got their toughest test yet on Monday, when they met the Denver Nuggets at 6 pm Pacific after opening the Tom Dundon era 2-0. Portland entered the night at 40-38 against a Denver team sitting at 50-28, and the matchup put Toumani Camara and the Blazers in front of a much different level of opposition.
That challenge starts with Nikola Jokic, the superstar at the center of a Nuggets team that has been rolling. Denver also listed Bruce Brown as questionable, while Spencer Jones, Zeke Nnaji and Peyton Watson were out. Portland had four players listed as out in Jerami Grant, Vit Krejci, Damian Lillard and Shaedon Sharpe, a short-handed group that made the trip even steeper for the Blazers.
This was not a game recap but a discussion thread, and the setup mattered because Portland was trying to show the early 2-0 start was no fluke. The source for the matchup also included viewing information for antenna, cable, streaming, League Pass and NBA TV, giving fans several ways to follow a night that figured to tell more about where the Blazers stand than their first two wins did.
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The tension was simple: Portland was unbeaten under Tom Dundon before tipoff, but Denver arrived with the record, the form and the superstar to force a real answer. If the Blazers were going to keep the momentum alive, they had to do it against the kind of opponent that exposes every weakness.
